Dacher Keltner (0:00)

An all prone person. They tend to be curious and love new things and always trying stuff.

Dr. Heather Berlin (0:05)

Openness to experience and other people.

Dr. Christoph Koch (0:07)

So this is the perception box. You're open to the world. You're open to new experiences. You feel there's something above and vastly bigger than you are versus closed. I've seen it all. I'm cynical.

Dacher Keltner (0:17)

Yeah.

Elizabeth Koch (0:19)

Hi, I'm Elizabeth Koch. We all live inside our own personal, private perception box, built by our genes and the physical, social and cultural environment in which we were born and raised. In this podcast, we explore how although the walls of this mental box are always present, they can expand in states like awe, wonder and curiosity, or contract in response to anxiety, fear and anger. I'd like to introduce our esteemed hosts, two incredible and distinguished minds. Dr. Heather Berlin, professor of Psychiatry and neuroscience at the I Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. And Dr. Christoph Koch, chief scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot foundation and the current meritorious investigator and former president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Welcome to the Science of Perception Box.

Dr. Heather Berlin (1:25)

Hi everybody. Welcome to Science of Perception Box. I'm your co host, Dr. Heather Berlint.

Dr. Christoph Koch (1:31)

And I'm your co host, Dr. Christoph Koch.

Dr. Heather Berlin (1:35)

Every week we feature an aspect of the Science of Perception Box, highlighting the latest research together with our expert guests. And this week we explore the feeling of awe. A mysterious and striking feeling. What is it and how is it different from other emotions? And I'm beyond thrilled to have one of the foremost scientists studying awe and its effects on the body, Dacher Keltner. Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Greater Good Science Center. He's authored six books including Born to Be Good, the Compassionate Instinct and the Power of Paradox. And his most recent book is Awe. We have it right here, the new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life. He has over 200 scientific publications and if you're trying to make meaning out of this vast and mysterious world, this will be a very illuminating conversation. So first we want to open it up with our connection to awe. So Kristo, when was the first time or when was the last time that you experienced awe?

Dr. Christoph Koch (2:44)

I don't know the last time, but there was this. A year ago, this very discreet episode. I was attending the opera in Seattle, Tristram Wiesold Wagen's opera, probably the most rapturous music ever composed in the western canon. And the second act, the so called Liebesnacht, the Love Night or the Night of Love, where the Two lovers, Tristan, Isolde. They're sort of staged by themselves on a backdrop of stars, and there's this soaring music, and it's just, you know, you totally become selfless, and you feel, you know, you have this bodily feeling. It's just an amazing feeling overall.

Dr. Heather Berlin (3:21)

Wow, that's beautiful.

Dr. Christoph Koch (3:23)

What about you?

Dr. Heather Berlin (3:24)

Me? Ah, that's a hard one, actually. I remember, actually when I gave birth to my daughter and I looked into her eyes, like, for the very first time, and it was just. I'm getting chills, actually, talking about it now. Like, I guess that's awe. I mean, amazement, like wonder. I couldn't. It was just beyond anything I had experienced before that. So I guess I can categorize. I mean, we'll find out if that is awe or what that feeling is. But let's welcome Dacher.

Dacher Keltner (3:58)

Thank you.

Dr. Heather Berlin (3:59)

Heather.

Dacher Keltner (4:00)

Nice to meet you. Krista.

Dr. Heather Berlin (4:01)

So, I mean, was that awe? How do you define awe?

Dacher Keltner (4:05)

Yeah, I think your examples illustrate a lot of what we've learned about awe. Awe is an emotion, so it's a distinct state that we feel when we encounter things, for the most part, that are vast and beyond our frame of reference. We can study awe as a feeling state in response to vast things that are mysterious. Music, childbirth being two classics. And then it affects our body and it affects how we perceive the world.

Dr. Christoph Koch (4:32)

So where else do you find us? Outside the opera and during birth, where else do you find awe?

Dacher Keltner (4:37)

Yeah, you know, that was a central question that we took on, and it was so great to start with your stories of awe, because after studying awe for six or seven years, my lab and I started to feel like we needed to, like William James did when he was interested in religious feeling. And it's a question about consciousness. Like, how do we really get the essence of it? We decided to gather stories of awe from 26 different countries because we were worried about just gathering Western European stories. So we have stories of awe from India and Mexico and China and South Korea, Japan, Poland, all over. And we find. It took us about two years to code these stories. We find awe in the moral beauty of other people, their kindness and courage, nature, Collective stuff, collective movement, being at a football match or dancing with people, and then music, visual design, and spirituality.

Dr. Heather Berlin (5:39)

I'm still trying to sort of figure out the definition of this in the sense of. And is it like a new emotion? You know, there's Ekman's emotions that, you know, cut across all these different cultures of, like, happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise. Am I missing one?

Dacher Keltner (5:54)

Anger.

Dr. Heather Berlin (5:54)

Anger, Yeah. I guess I Suppressed that one. But we won't get into that. We'll get to that later. You know, is this like another universal emotion?

Dacher Keltner (6:02)

Yeah, yeah. You know, and the last source of awe is life and death, which is really interesting. Childbirth and then watching people pass away. Yeah. You know, this is a hard problem. Right. How do you know an emotion has occurred? You know, how do we. What are the criteria by which we make that claim? And so for 25 years, a lot of scientists around the world, including my lab, have built upon Ekman's original discoveries. And I think there's now enough evidence to say There are about 20 distinct emotion states, and awe is one of them. And so how do we know? We look at the structure of experience, and we use sophisticated methods to figure out, you know, if I listen to music or if I watch really moving videos or listen to people's vocalizations, how many feeling states are there? And there are about 25. We can study the face and the voice like Ekman did. Right. And there are 20 distinct patterns of behavior.

Dr. Christoph Koch (6:57)

So is there going to be an oh meter on my watch in a couple of years from now? I mean, seriously, is there some physiological measure that relatively reliable identifies? You're now in a state of awe.

Dacher Keltner (7:09)

Yeah. And that's another way we understand these states is to look at their physiology. We know elevated vagus nerve activation is part of the awe response, but that's part of other pro social emotions like compassion.

Dr. Christoph Koch (7:21)

And just tell us about the vagus nerve.

Dacher Keltner (7:23)

Yeah, it's amazing. It's the antithesis of the fight or flight system, or one. And it's the largest bundle of nerves, starts in your spinal cord and facial musculature, drops into your throat, goes into your heart, lungs, digestive organs, communicates with the microbiome in the gut. And it's only recently been studied in emotion science. And it. Steve Porges started to say this. It. It slows us down, it calms us, it helps us vocalize, helps us make eye contact, social stuff. And so it's about social engagement. It correlates with awe. But I think the best bet is those, you know, goosebump responses track off and all. I'll say, you know, and this is where science is incredible, which is there's new work on the afferent cells that when you stimulate this area of your neck and the top of your head, it activates oxytocin release, which is part of this feeling of oceanic connection. That's part of all. So I think I put my money on there. Those muscle movements so we'd have to figure out a sensor back there to track it. And that's how we get to the emotion. It's like there are all these parts of the puzzle. Words, physiology, how I move my body, what it means to me, and that's key, which is awe. Fundamentally, as philosophers say, the intentional object of the experience is I'm really part of something larger than the self.

Dr. Heather Berlin (8:53)

But that's that idea of the self transcendence, which, you know, because I was going to ask, you know, could this be used in terms of therapy to help people achieve these states so they get into a better frame of mind. But there is this aspect of the disillusion of self in this experience of awe. It's something greater, right? You're talking about this, you know, whether it's through physics or music or something larger than yourself. And so is that key to this, the self transcendence?

Dacher Keltner (9:18)

I think that's the DNA of the emotion or its fundamental purpose is in our evolutionary history. Social mammals, humans, hypersocial, we did everything socially. We needed mechanisms to quiet down self interest and orient to other people. And that's what all does. Just across our studies, 30 different countries, kind of the core meaning of it is, like myself isn't that important. I am part of a piece of music and what it represents symbolically. I'm part of a group of people. I'm moving with cheering on the football field, right? I'm part of a spiritual group. I'm part of a moral community when I'm moved by people who speak truth to power or whatever it is. So I think fundamentally it's. You are part of something larger.

Dr. Heather Berlin (10:05)

So it's connection, really. It's not just the disillusion of self, but it is then therefore the connection with others or something like that culture.

Dr. Christoph Koch (10:13)

That you studied have a word for awe. And when the Koreans or the Japanese talk about awe, do you think it's really something very similar to what you and. I mean, yeah.

Dacher Keltner (10:23)

I mean, that's one of the hardest questions to really get definitive answers to. Every culture we've studied, you know, it's 30 or so, has some combination of symbols that translates to awe. They mean different things. If you go to Japan or Mandarin, Japanese and Mandarin, it's really about fear and respect, right? There's that social dimension built into their conceptualization of awe. But that's just the words, right? And then once you gather data on stories of awe, you know, physiology of awe, people's how it affects people socially, there's a deeper similarity across Cultures underlying these linguistic differences that we're documenting.

Dr. Heather Berlin (11:10)

Do you think it's similar to that, like, overview effect that astronauts have? Or, you know, when they see the Earth for the first time, or when William Shatner went into space and he came down. If you've ever seen that interview when he's just getting out of the. Having gone into space and he's like, ecstatic and transformed, you should check out this interview. But he just experienced something massive, and he's like, everybody on Earth should experience this because it will transform you. So is that similar, these transformative experiences, is that related to awe?

Dacher Keltner (11:45)

Yeah, I mean, I think the overview effect is suddenly, you know, out in space, you see the Earth and you're a little tiny piece of dust, as Carl Sagan said, or whatever it is on that planet. But that's common in a lot of experiences of awe. I interviewed this musician, Yumi Kendall, who plays the cello for the Philadelphia Symphony, you know, one of our best cellists in the country. And she said, you know, every. I mean, she is filled with goosebumps when she plays the cello in music and crying. All the physiological symptoms of odds. He said, when I play music and I feel the sounds leave the cello affecting my body out into the audience, I realize I'm part of, you know, 100,000 years of humans making music. And it's just. It's part of this human tradition or this big thing.

Dr. Heather Berlin (12:33)

You're connected.

Dr. Christoph Koch (12:34)

Do you think dogs that are social animals, monkeys or great apes, do you think they have a. And how would you know?

Dacher Keltner (12:42)

Yeah, you know, it's almost unanswerable if you rely on self report, right? Because they obviously. And I think. I think that misguides us. I mean, Franz de Waal, may he rest in peace, who really influenced my thinking, said, you know, you're studying all you have to look at Jane Goodall's observations of the waterfall display. The waterfall display, Jane Goodall coined the phrase, is when her chimpanzees encounter vast, mysterious natural forces. You know, large storms, thunder and waterfalls, big rushing cascades of water. And if you watch the video, they fluff up their fur, they rock ritualistically, as people will do together, for example, in spiritual observation. And they literally look absorbed in contemplating the river. And that, to me, tells us awe. And she said, of course they have awe. You know, it's just in the body, it's in their minds, but they can't tell you about it. But I see it.

Dr. Christoph Koch (13:45)

And so it predates the arrival of humans.

Dacher Keltner (13:49)

I think so. And you'd be the better one to ask, you know, Christophe. But I do feel this basic sense of, you know, expansion, contemplation, exploration, which you see in mammals, and then the bodily response, right. That's a big part of our experience of awe that I think we see in social mammals.

Dr. Heather Berlin (14:10)

And I think it's very much like with certain animals, they say they, you know, because they can't see that much into the future, it's hard for them to have things like anxiety, right? So anxiety is like fear of some future threat, but they might have like fear in the moment. But the thing about what seems about awe is that it's a really in the moment type of experience, which makes sense that, you know, animals can have it. And very much so what's happening in the brain, like, you know, the default mode network is that got involved and.

Dacher Keltner (14:35)

Yeah, how I should be asking. You guys should be studying on telling me, you know. But yeah, you know, and. And this is where in the emotion space. I think neuroscience is really helpful. You have a subjective report that we've replicated in our studies. When people feel awe, nature, meditation, you know, psychedelics, music, they're like, God, I was dissolving. I. I lost all awareness of the self. And that's real subjectively. And it really maps onto the neuroscience, which is the default mode network, which, you know, you're interested in, both of you, with interest in consciousness is kind of this realm, big chunks of the cortex involved in self representation and it's deactivated by awe, which I think is striking in Holland, Japan, United States, different ways of feeling awe, music, nature, et cetera. And that tells us indeed, our sense of not being focused on the self has corresponding neural correlates. And then, you know, there are limited studies showing there's oxytocin release with awe. You know, so maybe periaqueductal gray, but we don't know scientifically. That's really interesting.

Dr. Heather Berlin (15:51)

So potentially you could feel less pain when you're in the. Yeah, yeah.

Dacher Keltner (15:54)

And there's one study, I think, from Japan as well. Certain kinds of aug deactivate the amygdala and have enhanced activation in ventral striatum reward circuitry. So it starts to give us a sense of like, yeah, I'm not as self focused. I'm open to the world.

Dr. Heather Berlin (16:12)

So it could potentially be like in part of the toolkit, when we're trying to get people to these states of letting go, letting go of the rumination and the ego, that you have different ways to get there. Psychedelics, maybe creativity, and flow states and trying to induce sensations of awe. I mean, could we, you know, bottle this and create feelings of awe?

Dacher Keltner (16:35)

Heather, I think you're asking a question that I think in 15 years we're going to see a whole programmatic approach to the idea that awe is about healthcare. You know, it's so interesting to me to your question. Heather, I work in the well being realm as well, like little interventions to make people happy. You know, breathe and follow your breath and you know, count the things you're grateful for, et cetera. And awe is offering up things we're really good at to help our well being. Music, you know, music makes people happier. It helps with chronic pain. We now know and through awe, nature, you know, forest bathing and the like, other countries are way ahead of us. Even moral beauty, one of my favorite sources of all. Just think about someone who moves you morally. There are now studies coming out showing young people feel more inspired and stronger just with a little reflection. So I think it's a future of mental health.

Dr. Christoph Koch (17:36)

Do you think everyone is capable of awe or do you think some people, whatever, genetic or developmental reasons, are more prone to awe?

Dacher Keltner (17:45)

Yeah, yeah. I mean there's no doubt, you know, we. Evolution operates on individual differences. And there are. I was looking this up recently. There's amazing evidence showing, you know, heritability coefficients or that certain properties of awe are heritable and subject to individual differences. So the goosebumps is a good one where there are people who get the chills at music and it's a powerful individual difference. And our research shows some of that is genetic.

Dr. Christoph Koch (18:13)

Isn't.

Dacher Keltner (18:14)

Yeah, yeah. 30, 40%.

Dr. Heather Berlin (18:16)

Having known Kristoff for many years, he's very susceptible to awe. Like he has lots of awe experiences. I'm kind of jealous. Maybe there's a different threshold of what it takes to get excited. We were watching this video. Christoph showed me this video of this double rainbow. I watched this video and then I didn't feel the same. I've seen double rainbows and I'm like, why don't I feel that when I see it?

Dacher Keltner (18:37)

There were 50 million people who watched it. Well, I think what we enjoyed about it, why it was so viral, is.

Dr. Christoph Koch (18:43)

The display, the raw display of awe.

Dacher Keltner (18:47)

It's raw awe and all you need. If you're wondering what awe is, you just look at it. You go, there it is.

Dr. Heather Berlin (18:51)

But it seemed very, I mean, you know, like orgasmic, you know, in a way this, like it's almost as simple, you know, and we're. Which also releases oxytocin and all of that. I'm sure there's some, you know, connections there, but. So is there a way that we can utilize this in, in terms of like, fear of death? I have a great fear of death and I'm wondering if these kinds of. Because I know a lot of people with psychedelics, when they get these experiences, they can lose their fear of death.

Dacher Keltner (19:17)

Oh yeah, no.

Dr. Heather Berlin (19:18)

So what about awe?

Dacher Keltner (19:20)

The people who have had certain kinds of awe experiences will come out of it with a different view of life, right? I bet. William Shatner like, oh, you know, death's not as consequential as I thought it was. A lot of people who have near death experiences, people who watch other people die, as I did, and I write about it with my younger brother Rolf. You come out of it like, awe teaches you that there's a cycle of life. It's the fundamental principle of the natural world. Everything is born, grows and ends, right? And awe gets you there. It makes you realize this is a cycle. It isn't what I thought it was. And now. And I think it's a major opportunity, like in the psychedelic world. David Yadin, Peter Hendricks, work at NYU are showing. I think it's really important psychedelics makes you less frightened by death, even if you are facing death through awe, because it teaches you you're part of something larger, right? You're part of a cycle. We all are. And that is reassuring.

Dr. Christoph Koch (20:26)

How young does this occur? Can a child feel awe?

Dacher Keltner (20:29)

There's one study of children and all, and maybe, or maybe two, I will tell you. And I would encourage our listeners to watch this YouTube series, Babies in Tunnels.

Dr. Heather Berlin (20:40)

Oh, I've seen that.

Dacher Keltner (20:41)

When babies go into a tunnel in a car seat and their parents filming them, they think they're dead, you know, and they're like, life's over. And they come out into the light and they're like, oh my God. So I. So that tells us, if you just looked at it like, that's awe, right? They're vibrating about the meaning of what they're seeing. And I think you're right. I think we're always. There's a lot of awe early in life and then culture intrudes.

Dr. Heather Berlin (21:10)

How much does novelty fit into that? Because my kids are now 7 and 10, but like, especially my 7 year old, it's because everything is so new to him that he gets super excited about stuff that we are, you know, just blase about, like, mommy, did you know this or that? You know, like. And there is this sort of sense of awe. So so is novelty an aspect of it?

Dacher Keltner (21:30)

Yeah, I think it, it is. And I think that the new, you know, if you go back to that core, what are the core meaning structures that are part of awe? It's like things that are vast and beyond my narrow understanding in the moment. And then also, you know, the new, the mysterious. I chose the word mysterious just for, you know, colloquial purposes. But yeah, novelty is built into awe. And I think that sets up a bunch of hypotheses about awe in childhood, how we gravitate to novelty like Darwin did and just love all the new things. And it also sets up interesting ideas about, you know, in the, the middle of life. We know life is harder emotionally and well, being wise and maybe we need to go in search of new ideas and new discoveries. Right. To rekindle awe.

Dr. Christoph Koch (22:29)

So I think cynicism is sort of the opposite of that. Right. When you think you've seen it all, you think you know it all. That sort of kills off any possibility of experiencing awe, Right?

Dacher Keltner (22:41)

Yeah, that's a terrific observation. You know, people are always like, what's the opposite of awe? And part of it's alienation. I think like the awe prone person feels connected to purposes in life and communities. An all prone person. And we know with respect to individual differences, they tend to be curious and love new things and always trying stuff.

Dr. Heather Berlin (23:03)

Openness to experience and other people.

Dr. Christoph Koch (23:05)

So this is the perception box. You're open to the world, you're open to new experiences. You feel there's something above him vastly bigger than you are. This is closed. I've seen it all. I'm cynical.

Dacher Keltner (23:16)

Yeah. And I, you know, you look at our world right now and there's a lot of cynicism. I think that just the closed nature, the cynical nature of a lot of digital experience. So we got to open it up, you know, and always a good pathway.

Dr. Christoph Koch (23:29)

Can't you use digital technology to artificially generate or help people experience all?

Dacher Keltner (23:38)

Yeah, you know, you can. And you could ask the same question about pharmaceuticals and psychedelics and they do induce big experiences of awe. But in doing this research for 15, 20 years, Christoph, it was like we have so many incredible ways that culture has been refining to produce awe. Music, visual stuff, sports, so much odd sports, spiritual practice, meditation, reading, the great spiritual ethical traditions. We are good at this, right. And I tend to favor the more face to face, direct experience approaches pretty strongly. And I worry about VR, frankly, Oz, about being with people and listening to a piece of music. And if you've got this big Thing on your head. It's a different kind of experience.

Dr. Heather Berlin (24:27)

Did you do some work with PTSD and veterans with Oscar? Tell us a little bit about that.

Dacher Keltner (24:33)

Yeah, yeah. This was with Stacy Bear, who's a veteran who I write about in the book. And awe saved his life. He came out of Iraq. The stuff that he saw was brutal, traumatizing. And he found himself rock climbing and he's like, he just had this massive transformation. So he got a lot of people outdoors and we happened to study some veterans who just do a half day rafting on a river that I used to raft as a child. And a week later they have a 32% drop in PTSD. And if you talk to people who are working with ptsd, man, it's such a humbling condition. And it was mediated, it was accounted for by their experiences of awe. They're just like, I feel rattled by what I did in the war, but at this moment, I feel like I'm part of something bigger. We don't know how long these experiences last. I think that's one of the deepest questions. 90% of people can tell you a story of awe from their childhood where it's like, I still feel that it's still. For me, it was dinosaurs. It's just like God when I was 4 or 5. So we don't know how long it lasts and then how much. I like to tell people in our busy lives, once a week for 10 minutes, go look for it.

Dr. Heather Berlin (25:58)

I mean, the solar eclipse that just happened, oh, my God. I was in central. I watched in the great Lawn in Central Park. So it was like a group, collective exercise. And my office is right there. So I walked with a patient. There were all these adults and they were like little kids again. And when we reached almost the full eclipse, everyone started clapping and cheering. And you could just see it was everyone. The doorman from the little kid from everybody. It was like a collective experience of awe and this something larger than ourselves. I'm getting the chills again. Now I'm talking about it, right?

Dacher Keltner (26:27)

And, you know, we just think about the modern world we live in, and this is a little cliched, but it's still powerfully true, which is we used to have very serious relationships to night skies, you know, in terms of orientation and ideas and gods and goddesses, et cetera. We had serious relationships to bodies of water and forests and walking through. You know, I mean, this is just in our DNA and we now need these reminders of culture, of eclipses and the like. And, yeah, it's I hope, I think this science is opening us up again to that opportunity. South Korea, Japan, they use healthcare dollars to go out into the woods. And there are 21 pathways by which being in nature makes our bodies stronger.

Dr. Heather Berlin (27:16)

But I had a question about, is it always a positive feeling? Because you got me thinking. Christoph, you asked, is it? Could it one of these experiences impact you and last a lifetime? For me, it was this experience as a little kid that made me become a neuroscientist when I had this extreme fear of death. I was around five years old and I realized I was gonna die. And I thought, oh, can I just at least keep my own consciousness? And where do my thoughts come from? And how does my brain make thoughts? And this was like a burning question. But it was this feeling of like there's this whole something greater than just me. And it was a kind of feeling of awe. Cause I remember I was looking out at the night sky and thinking how small I was. And one day I'm gonna die. And so. But there was like a. And even thinking about, I remember studying in college, you know, astrophysics and getting an understanding of the grandeur of the universe. And it scared me because it was so grand that I almost like couldn't comprehend it. And fear came in. So is it always positive?

Dacher Keltner (28:11)

Yeah, you know, Jonathan Haidt and I wrote about that. And it's a fundamental reminder that we have in any discussion of all that, you know, emotions are complicated. They involve all these appraisals of the world. A fundamental appraisal of the world is, is it threatening? And you know, amygdala and cortisol and HPA axis and the like. And about a quarter of all experiences have serious threat in them. You know, like, you know, my daughter and I were backpacking in this beautiful cloud formation, came across, we were up in the high Sierras and then it started shooting down lightning bolts and hitting the ground. And we were like mechanics, you know. And that awe experience had threat and that changes everything. You know, you don't get the vagal tone shifts, you don't get, you get amygdala activation. You have a different emotional profile. It's more stress related in terms of bodily physiology and it doesn't have the benefits of awe. So, you know, about a quarter of the time awe gets mixed in with threat and fear. Western science so often, like, oh, threat and fear. Oh, that's a bad thing. You know, it's a. I, I don't like the frame, frames of negative and positive emotions. It's just A. It's just a feeling. Right. And then we make sense of it. And I think that's why the right kind of cultivation of awe makes. Even if it's scary. Right. I read a lot about the passing of my younger brother. It was filled with mystery and just watching his body deteriorate and leave and awe. But like, this is life. Life ends, you know, and the body goes. And that's an existential truth. And I felt better through awe coming out of that.

Dr. Heather Berlin (29:51)

Is that like, what. Because you're an emotion researcher. But what made you decide to study awe in particular?

Dacher Keltner (29:57)

Thank you for asking. I mean, part of it, you know, in the deep sense. I had a very awe filled childhood. You know, counterculture and you know, parents who were like, go out and experience the world. My dad was a visual artist, my mom taught romantic poetry and Wordsworth and Jelly and. And I just was like the sublime. Yeah, sublime. I was like my child. I was an anxious kid, but I was like, wow, Oz worth it. Part of it was watching my first daughter be born and second daughter, I was like you. I was just like, oh my God. And then, you know, I studied it. It's such, it's so important scientifically. You both have said experiences of awe were part of your scientific careers. Darwin, the same. All of Darwin. And so I was like, this has to be studied. And even if my peers laugh at me.

Dr. Heather Berlin (30:53)

Do you think it makes people happier, though? The more awe you experience, the happier the person?

Dacher Keltner (30:58)

I do. And we know that. And it also makes people feel like there's more meaning in their life.

Dr. Christoph Koch (31:04)

More meaning rather than more happy. Yeah, more meaning because you connect now with other. With the universe at large.

Dacher Keltner (31:13)

Exactly.

Dr. Heather Berlin (31:13)

In terms of like perception box. You know, when you're alone, you feel, I'm alone in the world and you're closed and you're, you know, scared. And then when you have this greater meaning and purpose, it kind of can open things up and expand your perspective and it doesn't feel. You don't feel so alone.

Dacher Keltner (31:28)

Well put.

Dr. Christoph Koch (31:29)

So how do you. If I step out of here in Oakland, tell me. And find awe.

Dacher Keltner (31:35)

Yeah. And I think the science is starting to lend us confidence in this. So you can go for an all walk. And we tested all walks once a week. When you go for a walk, put away, take some deep breaths, pause, put away your devices and just start to look for small things, you know, little elements of the wood pattern here and then span out and look at bigger things and just move your perception from the box to the expanse.

Dr. Heather Berlin (32:05)

Like this morning I did a little morning walk and I saw these beautiful yellow roses and I stopped and I looked and I was in awe of this perfect like yellow rose.

Dacher Keltner (32:17)

Yeah.

Dr. Heather Berlin (32:17)

So it was all in a small thing, you know, it doesn't have to be the grandeur of the universe.

Dacher Keltner (32:21)

Right. But my sense is. Is your sense that you're feeling the design of the flower and it's its evolutionary purpose and. Yeah. So span from small to large and just look for mystery in your walk. And we've tested that with people who are 75 years old or older. It benefits people. I love music as a source of awe. People ask me like, how in the world do I find awe? Do I have to be spiritual? You know, that's a separate question. But people are listening to music hours a day. Right. And all you have to do is listen to music a little bit more intentionally. Like, you know, here comes the sun, Beatles. I remember when that song came out and I was listening to it with my parents. You know, when I listen to that, it's transcendent. Right.

Dr. Heather Berlin (33:09)

How is this related to mindfulness? Because sometimes I go on these walks, I say I'm going on a mindfulness walk, you know, and I'll take patience with me and we'll look and observe and be present. How is that different than an awe walk?

Dacher Keltner (33:21)

Well, mindfulness is the non judgmental awareness of things in the world. And your mind, awe is when you are aware of your relationship and that you're part of vast things that have purpose in them. And we need more of that.

Dr. Heather Berlin (33:38)

It's more like scale and meaning.

Dacher Keltner (33:40)

Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Heather Berlin (33:47)

So at the end of every episode.

Dacher Keltner (33:49)

Yes.

Dr. Heather Berlin (33:50)

We ask a perception box question. Okay, I have some questions here. Okay. This is the question I'm going to pose to everyone. I'll answer myself as well. But what do you have to ignore to keep believing in what you believe?

Dr. Christoph Koch (34:08)

So as you mentioned earlier on, I tend to have quite a bit of awe in a variety of situation. And I'm not sure how I square that with the pain that's in the world. I myself, unfortunately, I've grown up very privileged. I don't have that pain. But I see other people suffer from a lot of pain. And so is that really is this feeling of all that I feel Holset Square was the pain out in the world?

Dacher Keltner (34:37)

Well, I would say it's interesting. Some of our most transcendent emotions, and there are three of the scientific literature is interested in compassion, gratitude and awe. Compassion is about embracing other people suffering. Gratitude probably emerged out of Food scarcity, ensuring food during complicated times in our evolutionary history. And awe very often is being moved by other people's strength and character when they overcome obstacles. So I think it's these emotions equip us to deal with the complexities and the real hardship right now, the climate crises and the rise of authoritarianism. So awe is a good emotion to be looking for in these times.

Dr. Heather Berlin (35:22)

So you're saying that what do you have to ignore to say, keep believing that there's. You have to ignore all those negative things that are happening in the world in order to keep believing in these things, like compassion and awe?

Dacher Keltner (35:35)

Yeah, I feel like we need to ignore deep cynicism. I think that philosophy has really. You find it in Wall street and so forth, you know, Machiavelli, Ayn Rand, et cetera, and the idea that we're all individual selves striving for self interest. I think it's much more. And right now, in this cultural moment, we need a bigger idea about humanity. And I think we need to ignore almost a truism in Western culture that I will be unhappy if I embrace the world's challenges and hardships. And the opposite, I believe, is true, that when we throw ourselves into the hardships, be it social injustice or what have you, we find deeper meaning. So I think we need a reorientation.

Dr. Heather Berlin (36:32)

This question reminds me of, like, hope. Like, why still have hope in the face of adversity? And, you know, I was thinking about, like, love, romantic love, right? And we've. I mean, I've been in serial monogamous relationships, but they end, you know, I wasn't fortunate enough to be in one of these. Like, we're together for 50 years and, you know, but even with that, I still have this belief in true love, in soulmates, in, like, really connecting with someone in a very significant way, despite previous relationships that did not last lifetimes. And so I think you have to just ignore whatever happened in the past to keep believing that this exists.

Dacher Keltner (37:13)

And. And I think awe. You know, Christophe cited the Romantic poets, right? They're all about the imagination. Romanticism is the imagination. What isn't here in reality. And, you know, we can't ignore that. And I think it's a wonderful property of these emotions of love and compassion that like, oh, I can imagine, and awe. I can imagine other worlds. That's why we need them now.

Dr. Heather Berlin (37:38)

Well, on that note, it was a real pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Dacher Keltner (37:45)

It's an honor to be here with you guys.

Dr. Heather Berlin (37:47)

Great. And if you'd like to learn more about your own Perception Box, spend some time this week answering the same Perception Box questions that we asked our guest. And check out our other questions on the website@ unlikely collaborators.com and you can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and watch the show or listen wherever you get your podcasts. This has been Science of Perception Box, created by Unlikely Collaborators in partnership with Pod People. I'm Dr. Heather Berlin.

Dr. Christoph Koch (38:15)

And I'm Dr. Christoph Koch. Thank you very much.